I shall, lastly, observe, that the symptomatic fever, named hectic, has the power of imparting so grateful an addition of vividness to our pleasurable emotions as to render the mind unaffected by painful emotions. Thus, in Phthisis Pulmonalis, how eloquently, yet faithfully, has a late eminent medical practitioner, Dr Parr, described the unconsciousness of pain, which, in the face of the most imminent and fatal symptoms, enables the patient to soar above despondency. "In the advanced stages," he remarks, "the irritation of the cough is incessant, the heat or perspiration almost constantly distressing, and when these are absent, the life seems exhausted from debility. What, then, affords the cheering ray of expected relief? Such, however, is afforded; for ingenuity invents every fallacious mode of eluding inquiries, and of giving the most favourable view of every symptom. The patient sinks to the grave with the constant assurances of having attained greater strength, and a relief from every dangerous symptom; with eager expectations of another year, when life is limited by another day. Such, we would say, is the kind interposition of Providence, was the same cheerfulness found in every disease, and was not, in mány, the gloom as distressing to the patient as the ill-founded expectation of the consumptive victim is to the well-informed anxious friend. This cheerfulness is said to be owing

cloth, and what not." The same excellent antiquary also remarks, "That about the year 1760, a poor idiot, called Cuddie Eddie, habited much in the same manner, and rattling a cow's horn against his teeth, went about the streets of Hawick in Scotland."

to the absence of pain; but pain is not always absent: and the difficulty of breathing, the incessant cough, the burning heats, the deluging perspirations, would appear worse than the most poignant pain. Yet these are disregarded, represented as trifles, lessened in the report to the most inconsiderable inconveniences: it is truly singular.”*

cause.

It must inevitably follow from the foregoing remarks, that the quality of all spectral illusions, whether distinctly pleasurable,-distinctly painful,—or alternately pleasurable and painful, must depend upon the particular nature and excitability of its morbific For we have seen that in the symptomatic fever, named hectic, a morbific cause vivifies every pleasurable feeling which can possibly connect itself with a favourable prognosis. And if we grant, that this illusive hope of an immediate state of convalescence arises indiscriminately in the breast of the consumptive patient, what reason is there, that an expectation equally extravagant should not extend to a probable state after death: that scenes connected with the prospect of a blessed immortality should not rise before him, with all the vivid colouring that a hectic affection is so capable of imparting to the images of fancy, or that spectral impressions of angel-visits, incidental to a morbidly-excited state of hope, should not alike be cherished by the good man as by the slave of vice? The truth is, that the guardian spirits, who honour the beds of dying patients with a visit, adopt a line of conduct never to be depended upon for consistency.

Parr's London Medical Dictionary, vol. ii. p. 398.

As harbingers to heaven, they shew the same readiness in offering their services of introduction to sinners as to saints. This fact still continues to meet with confirmation from many modern superstitious narratives, the subjects of which are the visible tokens of salvation, and beatific visions (if they may be so called,) enjoyed by the most dissolute and abandoned of human beings at their hour of death; and it is amusing to observe, how scriptural authority is in mysterious language wrested from its plain and evident meaning, to account for an inconsistency so glaringly opposed to all the conditions on which the joys of heaven are promised; namely, that they should be the reward of virtuous integrity.

These are all the illustrations which I have to offer on the first variety of general mental excitements that I took occasion to explain, where the cause to which the affection may be referable, is found to add to the vividness of pleasurable feelings, but proportionally to diminish that of painful feelings: the general result being, that pleasurable feelings are by this means rendered inordinately intense, while painful feelings become so faint as to cease being the object of mental consciousness.

CHAPTER XIII.

WHEN MORAL AGENTS WHICH EXERT A PAINFUL INFLUENCE ARE HEIGHTENED IN THEIR EFFECTS BY THE CO-OPERATION OF MORBIFIC EXCITEMENTS OF A SIMILAR PAINFUL QUALITY, THE MIND MAY BE RENDERED TOTALLY UNCONSCIOUS OF OPPOSITE OR PLEASURABLE FEELINGS.

"Mark how he trembles in his ecstacy."

Comedy of Errors.

I SHALL now consider the effect of those morbific agents, which exert a contrary influence on the states of the mind; which impart an additional degree of vividness to painful ideas, and thereby render proportionally faint all feelings of a pleasurable nature. When, from a highly-excited state of the melancholic temperament, a paroxysm of actual insanity is induced, the hideous phantoms incidental to it are not to be dispelled by the vividness of a single pleasurable emotion: "The darken'd sun

Loses his light: the rosy-bosom'd Spring
To weeping Fancy pines: and yon bright arch
Contracted, bends into a dusky vault.

All nature fades, extinct."

Burton, when speaking of persons melancholy à toto copore," observes, "that the fumes which arise

from this corrupt blood, disturbe the minde, and make them fearful and sorrowfull, heavy-hearted as the rest, dejected, discontented, solitary, silent, weary of their lives, dull, and heavy. And if farre gone, that which Apuleius wished to his enemy, by way of imprecation, is true in them; dead men's bones, hobgoblins, ghosts, are ever in their mindes, and meet them still in every turne: all the bugbeares of the night and terrors, and fairy-babes of tombes and graves are before their eyes, and in their thoughts."

Im

The foregoing remarks of this very accurate describer of the symptoms of melancholy but too plainly shew, how completely the undue excitement of painful ideas can reduce to an unconscious degree of faintness all joyous thoughts. And how well is this fact illustrated in the too correct, yet very uncharitable description of a melancholic scholar, as depicted by an early popular writer. "A melancholy man," says Sir Thomas Overbury, "is a stranger from the drove : one that nature made a sociable, because she made him man, and a crazed disposition has altered. pleasing to all, as all to him; straggling thoughts are his content, they make him dream waking, there's his pleasure. His imagination is never idle, it keeps his mind in a continuall motion, as the poise of the clocke: he winds up his thoughts often, and as often unwindes them; Penelope's webbe thrives faster. He'le seldom be found without the shade of some grove, in whose bottome a river dwels. Hee carries à cloud in his face, never faire weather: his outside is framed to his inside, in that hee keepes a decorum, both unseemly. Speake to him; he heares with his eyes, eares follow